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Fireworks Guide - Layering
Animating by Gregio ---- As said in the image, Layering is easy on Fireworks. You can have multiple editable objects in a same layer and even in the same layer you can set them to be above others, which is really useful. I guess that's enough on Layering, you should learn the rest (whatever little is to discover) by yourself. Let's go into frames now. ---- Frames Now, I'm sure this is what you all have been waiting for. The frame system is actually really simple, let's examplify with an image. 1 is pretty self-explanatory, let's skip that. 2 is the frame speed, good speeds for the most common stances are 7, 9 and 12. 3 is to manually add a new Frame, same as shift+F on CS3 or if you added your custom shortcut. 4 Deletes chosen frames. 5 Loop settings is how many times you want your gif to loop when it's being visualized, you'll usually just leave that at Forever. That neat key I said I'd leave for later, I'll leave alone for a while more. As for the button on the left of loop settings, that's Onion Skinning, I don't use it very often, but it shows the next, and previous frames or the whole animation in low opacity in the current frame, it's weird, and not really all useful, but you should try experimenting with it. Now, let's get on that neat tool and some more. The image is self explanatory, so let's only go deeper on the Distribute to frames function. Notice how beneath my char there's a bunch of images? Like if there were all the frames of a skill there? Well, there are. What you have to do now, is choose all the skill frames, and click 'Distribute to frames'.It'll then distribute all the frames of your skill in order trough the animation. Useful things about this tool are obvious, but here is what I do. I align all the images of a skill I'm going to use, then I save them on a separate file or a large sprite sheet. Then, all I have to do is import the skill and distribute it to the frames, really useful, huh? But of course, gif animations aren't all about skills, specially mine, most of it will have to be painfully aligned manually. Here go some tips on that. Using the arrow keys on your keyboard allow you to move the chosen image(s) 1 pixel. Using shift+arrow keys move your image(s) 10 pixels. Ctrl + UP move the chosen image up in the layer, so, suppose you have 3 images, 1 is the tile, another is the background, and the third is your character. You imported your character beneath the tile and in front of the background, so you'll have to click him and press CTRL+UP to bring him ahead of the tiles or you would use CTRL + Down if for example, you had imported him in front of a pillar or something that should be in front of him. Pressing CTRL + Shift + UP/DOWN will move your image to the bottom OR top of your layer. Alt + arrow keys when pressing an image will copy the image and move it. Now, let's prepare the outcome of our gif and finish it, right? As said on the image, these are the best settings you can use, and it's what I'll use. Now, let's finish the animation, right? So, what will we do, well, that's simple. We choose the skill images and distribute it to frames. Here's the end result. ---- Walking: Video Tutorial -click here- to download tutorial Note: File is big but very detailed. ---- Walking: Written Tutorial For Frame Speed 9, if you are using Frame Speed 7, instead of 7 pixels, move it 5 pixels. Place your walking stances 7 pixels apart from the previous, starting by walk 0. Frame by Frame. Do the same with the other stances of walk, having stances 1 and 3, One pixel lower than 0 and 2. In the end, it should look like this (except faster) ---- Copy that sequence and paste it aligning the first walk0 of the copied sequence with the last walk 3 of the original sequence via the head, then move it one pixel up and 7 in the desired direction. Repeat until you walk the desired distance. ---- Proper result